Saturday, 31 March 2012

As a memorial to Miss Aksa Parvez and Miss Zainab Shafia, I am providing this article by a noted Toronto writer, verbatim to my readers. Just two of too many young local woman; murdered by their family members; currently incarcerated in Canadian prisons for a very long time, I will be surfing the web to gather timely information for a continuing series about the 'War on Women' so that we may understand the mindset that justifies and perpetuates 'honour killings' in Canada. Hopefully, by exposing this scourge, our governments will provide safe housing for those threatened.

More controversial Muslim books for sale,

By Terry
Davidson, Toronto Sun, Friday, March 30, 2012TORONTO - An Islamic bookstore in east
Toronto
is selling books that urge Muslims to usurp the Western world and
install an
Islamic State in its place. The books, written by deceased Islamic
scholar Sayyid Abul Ala Maududi – are
available at the Islamic Circle of North America bookstore in
Scarborough. “Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments
anywhere on the face of
the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam
regardless of
the country or the Nation that rules it,” Maududi wrote in Jihad in
Islam.
“Islam requires the earth – not just a portion – but the whole planet.”
Maududi was an influential Pakistani journalist, theologian and Muslim
revivalist leader who wrote more than 120 books and pamphlets and lived
from
1903 to 1979. He is described in the preface of one of the books as an
author who “provided
the present-day revival of Islam with its intellectual foundations.”
Maududi’s books carry a common theme of Islam as a revolutionary
“ideology
and program which seeks to alter the social order of the whole world and
rebuild
it in conformity with its own tenets and ideals.”
“Jihad,” which he refers to in at least one book as a war against
non-Muslims, is in fact “undertaken for the collective well-being of mankind” to
establish “God’s order” in the world and create a “just and equitable social
order among human beings,” he wrote. Terrorism expert David Harris calls such material — antiquated or not —
incredibly “problematic” to National security, but goes on to say that because
of Canada’s freedom of expression legislation, police and the courts, in many
cases, can’t do much about it.
“This is highly problematic,” said Harris, adding that with Canada’s ever
expanding immigration of people from Middle Eastern countries - such as Egypt —
the chances of importing people with radical ideologies also increases. “What
we’re seeing now is not even a hint of what we will be living ... We’re going to
see an expanding of these tendencies.”
A request for the Islamic Society of Toronto to speak about the books
was not
immediately returned. Tarek Fatah, a Muslim moderate and renowned
commentator, cautioned that such
literature can be dangerously attractive to young men raised in
overly-strict
Muslim households. “The radical Islamists ... keep pumping this idea
that ... their Islamic
heritage is far superior than what the Western world has done, and that
the
West, what it’s doing, is absolutely Satanic, and these books over here
validate
those issues,” said Fatah. Most of Maududi’s books — small and slim
paperbacks — could be bought for as
little as $1. When one of the store’s managers was asked by a reporter
who posed as a
customer whether he stocked “Jihad in Islam” — arguably the most radical
book of
the bunch — he said he hadn’t carried it for years because the RCMP had
been to
his store to ask questions about why it would carry such a book. Another
manager said the store didn’t carry any of the six books on the
reporter’s list. But within 30 minutes, the reporter found Jihad in
Islam and four others of
Maududi’s stacked on a bottom shelf in the middle of the store. When it
was revealed to the store manager that it was a Toronto Sun reporter
who bought those books, he was irate, saying he “will say nothing”
before
disappearing into an office at the back of the store. Like the manager,
the RCMP would not comment.

In the The Process of the Islamic Revolution, Maududi wrote that
Muslims
“should be prepared to sacrifice all prospects of personal advancement
in
wordily life” including giving up friends and their own and their
parent’s
expectations to further the expansion of Islamic belief. “Society,
government, law, nation, country, whatsoever obstructs the
achievement of their object [of an Islamic Revolution], they should be
prepared
to struggle against it,” he wrote. On the other hand, it is “impossible”
for Muslims to live under an “alien
State System” and observe Muslim beliefs, he wrote. In Jihad In Islam,
Maududi wrote: “All rules which he considers wrong; all taxes that he
deems unlawful; all
matters which he believes to be evil; the civilization and way of life
which, in
his view, are wicked; the education system which seems to him as fatal –
all
these will be so inexorably imposed on him, his and his children that
evasion
will become impossible,” he wrote. As soon as Islam “captures” another
state, it will ban gambling and
prostitution, outlaw business dealings forbidden by Islamic law and
“make it
obligatory for non-Muslim women to observe the minimum standards of
modesty in
dress as required by Islamic Law.”

Friday, 30 March 2012

Right to
Work... a lifeline for Ontario industry!

Are the Liberals going to wait
until the last of Ontario's manufacturing sector moves out before
they act? Are we destined to move away from manufacturing and all
become 'burger-flippers'?

It's sad news indeed for
Ontario that Caterpillar Inc.’s locomotive operations in London,
Ont., a 62-year-old plant just shifted to Indiana; a new Right to
Work state two
days after the Governor made the announcement. For a little history,
on Jan. 1, the company locked the workers out and on Feb. 3,
Caterpillar’s Progress Rail Services unit announced it would cease
operations at its Electro-Motive Diesel locomotive assembly plant,
citing the need to be cost-competitive in a global market and closed
the plant for good, eliminating even more Ontario manufacturing jobs.

Electro-Motive Canada (a subsidiary owned by Caterpillar)
initially cut its work force last summer. The company then asked for
a top end wage cut from $40/hr to $34/hr. When the Union said no, the
company never returned to the bargaining table, despite a photo-op by
Premier McGuinty.

This isn’t just about the 700 people who
lost their jobs that day. It’s not even about the 1,000-plus who
will follow because their jobs as truckers and suppliers depended on
the plant, or the impact on a community that already has one of the
highest jobless rates in Canada. It’s not even about the harsh side
of global competition and its impact on the middle class that raises
unsettling questions about competitiveness in Central Canada and the
future prospects of Ontario, the country’s most populous province
and home to 40 per cent of its economic activity.

No, this is
about the impact of the Right to Work initiative spreading throughout
the United States, in fact pushing further northward that forced
Caterpillar and many others to turn their backs on Ontario. Why even
Wisconsin and Ohio last year passed laws stripping most public sector
unions of collective bargaining rights.

It goes without saying that
the Union/Liberal movement received a terminal wake-up call when Gov.
Mitch Daniels and the Indiana House recently voted 54-44 to make
Indiana the 23rd right-to-work state in just the latest successful
legislative push targeting union power following a Republican sweep
of statehouses in 2010, making Indiana the first Rust Belt state to
ban contracts that require workers to pay mandatory union fees for
representation..and announcing, that Indiana is now open for
business. Indiana would mark the first win in 10 years for national
right-to-work advocates who have pushed unsuccessfully for the
measure in other states. But few right-to-work states boast Indiana’s
union clout, borne of a long manufacturing legacy. Oklahoma passed
right-to-work legislation in 2001 but has a rural-based economy that
produces comparatively fewer union jobs than Indiana.

While Union Bosses, like
Teamsters President Jim Hoffa sounded resigned to the right-to-work
measure’s passage, he promised a backlash by remaining unionists
with his partisan message that his supporters will rise up to
challenge new legislation despite the fact that main street voters
resoundingly kicked the Union/Liberal movement to the curb.

Caterpillar’s move out of Ontario may
well be an extreme and brutal example but it’s just the latest in a
string of closures, from AstraZeneca’s research facility in
Montreal (132 jobs) to heavy-truck manufacturer Navistar in Chatham,
Ont. (1,100 jobs). The London area has been particularly hard hit:
Ford Motor Co. of Canada closed its doors in nearby St. Thomas last
year (1,200-plus jobs) while 3M Canada has trimmed its
manufacturing work force in London to 235 people from 400 five years
ago. The closures are the result of fierce global competition,
automation, and a currency that trades at parity compared with 62
cents to the U.S. dollar a decade ago, obliterating a key cost
advantage.

In years past,
the jobs have flowed to cheaper manufacturing centres, like China or
India. Now, they’re just as likely to shift to the suddenly
business-friendly United States. Global competition isn’t just
between multinational companies. It’s also between regions,
desperate to attract jobs to areas where unemployment is high and
local economies have been ravaged. Why even southern Ontario is now
attempting to attract Nuclear waste!

In Caterpillar's case,
the locomotive jobs are only moving a scant six hours away, to
Muncie, Indiana, where junior wages of $12 to $16/hr matched those of
the company's offer to the London plant employees. Muncie’s own
jobless rate is 9 per cent, though officials figure the real rate is
double that.

While some Union Bosses may insist this is a
race to the bottom, London’s jobless rate was 9 per cent even
before Caterpillar closed the Electro-Motive Canada plant, well above
the national average of 7.6 per cent.

Southwestern Ontario,
which is the economic locomotive of the Canadian economy… is still
struggling. Plants have come and gone over the years. This time seems
different. For one, Electro-Motive Canada isn’t facing economic
hardship. It just posted a record quarterly profit, as any of its 700
former workers will say. The plant was productive, profitable and
reliable, with a stellar safety record. It is easily
forgotten that one of the causes of the evolution of the modern
Ontarian urban union was the lawless suppression of workers by the
Liberal party affiliated political machines, and yet it did not take
so very long before the union became an outgrowth of that same
political machine. And having wiped out nearly every independent
industry with which it was associated, the only unions still
surviving are those in control of either municipal services or provincially subsidized service providers, particularly in the medical
field.

If the union
began as a way to negotiate salaries and working conditions between
employers and workers, the modern day union is often little more than
the Ontario Liberal government and their union supporters bleeding
the public dry in order to subsidize a political party and a union
leadership that brings in the votes for their party.

The
situation is most critical in Toronto, but many GTA budgets are
almost as badly strained by the combination of municipal union
contracts and the subsidized services that they are associated with
and is a harsh reminder of the utter greed and ruthlessness of the
union’s last stand, their death grip on public services fed by
taxpayer money. These stands have little to do with worker’s
rights. They have next to nothing in common with the old union image
of underpaid workers protesting outside of factories. It’s still
about exploitation, but it’s about the exploitation of the public
by a Union-Liberal government political establishment.

As the Union
Bosses of old have given way to managers and then to Liberal
politicians, the Union Bosses of today are the only bosses still in
the game, who enjoy wealth and power far beyond those of the average
taxpayer being fleeced without his or her consent. Union rhetoric may
pretend that they are contending with Mayors and Premiers, but in
reality it’s the public that they’re really contending with. Even
Mark Ferguson, leader of local 416 recently acknowledged that the
'public hates unions'! Their threats of mayhem and strikes have
hardly any effect on Liberal politicians, but are intended to target
the public, instead. And the money that they’re paid with is
taxpayer money and too often, Liberal politicians are more than happy
to give in.

Union negotiations with Liberal politicians that
they help elect are a corrupt farce, because the money extracted from
the taxpayer goes in part to the same politicians who decide whether
to accept or reject their offer. In any law abiding system, this
would be a tremendous conflict of interest, like sending in your real
estate lawyer to act as your mortgage broker. But under our current
system it is actually commonplace for unions which live off contracts
with Liberal politicians, to be able to fund and work to elect those
same politicians. And it represents a level of corruption that makes
corporate tax shelters that Liberal pundits complain about seem
almost petty. And now Ontario is collapsing under the weight of dirty
contracts with unions that act like a Praetorian Guard, elevating and
removing Premiers and Mayors who displease them.

The right to work in Canada, free of Union influence should be a
fundamental right just like the right to vote. Under our law, if you
want to get a job you have to authenticate your identity and
authenticate your citizenship or your work visa to be able to work as
a citizen.

That
is no different than what municipalities across Ontario, and indeed
across Canada do when each Canadian citizen enters their respective
polling station. So why is it that a company can hire us but then we
are told we have to report to some Union Boss who we didn't agree to
work for?

If this was
just corrupt collusion between Business Owners and Union Bosses, as
has often been the case with some unions, then the only
victims would be union members. But this is corrupt collusion between
Union Bosses and Liberal politicians, exchanging public money for
political support. And not letting go even when the public is
bleeding red and there’s literally no more money to give. Unions
are always at the head of the line; unions get paid, while the public
is delayed. Ontario unions spend millions with their Working Families
Coalition to put Premier McGuinty in place and more to keep him
there. How long can the system go on before it breaks down? That
doesn’t really matter as the men at the top in Ontario got there
through union backing.

While many
private sector Union Bosses have became virtual pariahs with union
jobs either going south or being outsourced as union jobs in
manufacturing dwindle down to around 20%, the Ontario public sector
unions remain a tick fixed on the bloodstream of the taxpayer. You
didn’t have to be a factory owner to be drained by them. You didn’t
need to own a single share of stock. All you had to do was live and
pay taxes in an area where public sector unions had you gripped in
their claws.

The
intersection of entitlements and public sector unions and the Liberal
political machine meant that money was being exchanged for political
support, and the folks outraged were not the ones that Liberal
politicians cared about. They still made a show of driving a hard
bargain, but more often they showed up at union conferences to loud
cheers. Their old electorate paid taxes. Their new electorate gobbled
them.

Factories were
once Ontario’s largest source of employment. While still sizable as
the third-largest employer after the health care and retail sectors,
manufacturing has slid dramatically with over 300,000 manufacturing
jobs disappearing on McGuinty's watch, and today the number of people
who work in factories hovers near a 30-year low.

The recent Drummond report on the state of Ontario’s finances minced no words
about manufacturing’s role in Ontario. The sector has dwindled as a
share of the province’s output and employment base and this trend
will continue as the manufacturing industry is hammered by a strong
dollar and uneven American demand.

Statistics help
tell the story:

Factory
employment, traditionally a source of high-paying jobs has faded to
just 11.8 per cent of total employment, half the levels they were
in 1976

2. Census
numbers this month show just how dramatically the country is
tilting. Alberta tops the country’s population growth, followed by
British Columbia. Ontario’s rate of growth is below the national
average for the first time in a quarter of a century.

3. London
tumbled out of Ontario’s top-10 big city list.

Much talk on
the picket line at Electro-Motive Canada centred on Alberta. One
former worker left for Fort McMurray just last month. Others are
contemplating a similar move. For them, the Made-In-Canada era is
over. If Central Canada’s cost advantage is fading, and if
corporate taxes have already been cut to below those of the United
States, what else can the industry do?

And this brings us to
2012 where the oppressed worker is now the taxpayer, whose income and
future are being garnished by unions. The poor man standing out in
the rain is not the union employee, but the man waiting to collect
another check, that will be torn apart and consumed by Union Bosses
and Liberal politicians. Who will then protect these folks, from the
unions?

On March 27, 2012, Ontario Liberals tabled OUR province's very
disappointing fiscal 2012 budget. Due to McGuinty's inability to control
his spending addiction, we will not see business taxes coming down until
he is able to bring his deficit down...meaning NEVER?

Ontario has lost too many major employers with more on the way out despite much talk of lowering business taxes to help grow the private sector and create jobs. In all fairness, our business taxes are relatively low right now and really are only one of the minor problems employers face. Other than exploding energy costs, the major problem we are having in manufacturing is staying competitive in the global economy.

Manufacturers need assistance right now to help grow the private sector by removing barriers to success if we are to deal with our present provincial government's onerous accumulated debt and outrageous deficit.

Only by creating new manufacturing jobs and protecting existing manufacturing jobs to get and keep Ontarian's working is this possible! If this concept is worth exploring, I would like to suggest the formation of a 'Blue Ribbon' panel, encompassing taxpayers and business owners to delve a little deeper to perhaps make some policy recommendations.

Ontario has the most educated skilled workforce in
the world. We are multilingual and multicultural. Ontario may not be
the source of well-paying manufacturing jobs it once was, but
manufacturing will hardly fade into the sunset provided we are able
to re-float this ship with Right to Work legislation and protect the
Ontario worker from Union/Liberal malfeasance as I, along with many
Ontarian's believe, as a province, we should produce things that
people want to buy, and that our children's future is not just about
oil and natural resources.